The two men did, and Adrian hopped over the side. His sandals grated on pebbles and sand, and he reached back in for the sack of what Center, for some reason, called molotovs.
“Back in a minute,” he said casually, and walked up the beach.
The rams of the quinqueremes almost glowed with Center’s unearthly vision, serrated bronze catching faint starlight. Off somewhere a man’s voice raised in song, then ended in a squall—probably a wakened sleeper hitting him, Adrian thought distantly. He walked casually: if you looked as if you belonged, you’d shed a casual glance—people saw what they expected to see. Turning, he took his stance and aimed. Left to right, he thought.
Swing, swing, throw.
The jug arched out, wobbling a little as the liquid within shifted. It struck the first quinquereme right on the forecastle, on the timber square added to bear the weight of the guns. Crash. Not very loud, but distinct amid the wave lap and insect buzz of the night. A flicker of light, as the air found the quicklime. Crash. One more, to make sure. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash . . .
Fire on every one of the four captured ships. Enough to brighten this stretch of beach quite perceptibly; paint and rope and dry pinewood caught easily. Now all he could do was pray.
probability of optimal outcome 51% ±3, Center supplied hopefully. in this instance, “optimal” requires the survival of adrian gellert.
I’ll still pray, Adrian thought, jogging back to the boat.
“Good to see ye, sor,” Simun panted.
They shoved off and began rowing, not so quickly as to attract attention . . . he hoped.
“Uh-oh.”
A horn winded through the night, and then an alarm drum. With the gathering light from the burning ships, the harbor looked much smaller than it had in darkness. Much smaller, and the fire baskets on the entrance forts suddenly blazed, as they were swung in and then out again with a fresh load of pine knots. The huts nearest the beach held the deck crews of the Confed warships; men were swarming down to the shore, wading out and climbing up the sides of their vessels. Already officers were beginning to warp them away from the burning ships—excess caution, really. They were close, but not that close, and without rigging or sails aloft it would take more than heat and sparks to set them alight. Confeds might have been able to extinguish the fires on the captured ships if they’d gone straight there, Adrian mused—anything to distract his mind from what might happen, and what he couldn’t do a thing about. They had no chance at all once they’d finished seeing to their own ships, but trained reflex was stronger than thought in an emergency. It had to be.
Flames licked higher from the prows of the ex-Islander warships. Adrian suddenly felt like a bug on a plate, his head whipping to and fro as he tried to see in all directions at once. Simun and his nephew were cursing in antiphonal harmony as they dug their oars in madly, like the chorus at a Goat Song festival play. Men were crowding onto the parapets of the wooden forts—archers. A six-oared launch put out from one of them, and the officer in the bows was pointing at him. More and more men ran down to the shore, and the growing buzz from the Confed camp was like some great beast awakening, grumpy and angry from its winter sleep . . . and growling.
Sisst. A flight of arrows came slanting down out of the dark, into the water off the skiff’s bow. Sissst. Closer now, and the raiders’ own efforts were driving them further into range. The light grew ever brighter, as well. He could see quite plainly now, for several hundred yards; see the crew manhandling a catapult around on the tower top, a dart-thrower that could skewer a man at a thousand feet, much less the four hundred that separated his own tinglingly vulnerable body from it.
His head whipped back to shore. There were other small craft there; men were shouting and pointing at Adrian’s skiff, and launching the boats. All men are initiates of the mysteries of death, he repeated to himself. And: Helga. Damn it . . .